Mark Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall's brother and founder of the charity
Elephant Family, has died aged 62. This is how he described his hobbies and
love of animals in the Telegraph last year

I’m currently much too busy to remember what day it is let alone whether it’s a weekend. The team behind my charity, Elephant Family, and I are working seven days a week, sometimes nights too, to get ready for the huge fundraiser I am hosting next week, a masked ball called the Animal Ball. It’s going to be fantastic – we’ve modelled it on Truman Capote’s fabulous parties and Jools Holland is going to be playing – but the preparation period is particularly stressful.

I’ve always found people to be by far the biggest problem-causers in life. If it isn’t someone cancelling attendance at the party, it’ll be one of my women friends asking me to choose one of the animal masks we’re selling for the ball for them – what do I know about fashion! People are so difficult. Give me an elephant any day. The masks are also proving to be a security issue because a lot of well-known people are attending, including my eldest sister and brother-in-law [the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall]. I’m not sure yet how Clarence House is going to deal with people turning up with half their faces covered.

Spending hours in the office is certainly not my natural habitat and once the ball is over I’ll be straight off on holiday. When I was younger and travelled all the time, I hated the thought of lying on a beach and chilling out, but now, especially after two hip replacements, I’ve got to an age where it’s quite appealing. There aren’t many new places I want to go to any more, either. I foolishly agreed to go on a week-long cruise on the Queen Mary with my nephew Tom [Parker Bowles, the food writer] recently and I can’t tell you how boring it was. My perfect weekend would not be spent cruising, that’s for sure, but I love hot places and I have this need to be somewhere where I don’t have to put clothes on. I would wander around completely starkers in the office if I could; clothes are a complete waste of time.

During less busy periods at work, I’ll spend weekends and downtime at my London home watching all the television serials I can get my hands on. I’m addicted to Game of Thrones and The Killing, but I have to watch them on a Friday night otherwise I can find myself playing them back to back until 5am.

My flat is a bit like an oriental bazaar. It’s filled with the oddest objects from all my travels and you can’t really move in it. I love collecting antiques and often spend weekends driving around bric-a-brac markets. It’s the only kind of shopping I like: when I take my daughter Ayesha [18, his only child with ex-wife Clio Goldsmith] clothes shopping, all I can bear to do is sit outside and wait for the bill, which we halve. I don’t mind mail order catalogues either, because at least you get to look forward to a surprise, even if it doesn’t fit.

It’s only me in the flat at the moment. Ayesha has just finished her A-levels and is living with her mother before starting a history of art course at university in September. I’m currently without any pets, too, after a run of keeping a troublesome mongoose who once escaped in a restaurant and started eating a lady’s spaghetti, then a myna bird who spoke in an Irish accent and finally a Staffordshire bull terrier called Satan, who I looked after for a friend while he was “a guest of her Majesty”, as he referred to his spell in prison. Satan caused me all sorts of lawsuits.

I’ve always loved animals. I think it stems from my childhood. When I was about eight years old my mother would go to Harrods every two weeks to do her shopping and while she was buying boring things I’d sneak off to the pet department. In those days they had lions and tigers and there was a lot of squeaking and growling going on. To me it was the most exotic place in the world.

I can’t say that I was born with an urge to protect elephants, though – I think the only ones I saw were on trips to the zoo. My relationship with them, especially the endangered Asian elephant that we’re now desperately trying to save, began when I was looking for an idea to write about after my first book, Skulduggery, hadn’t sold very well. I’d gone to India on a whim and decided to buy an elephant to ride across the country.

It was partly inspired by a strange photo I found when searching through my grandmother’s papers after she died, of a bull elephant chasing a mahout who was wearing high heels: a very surreal picture which locked in my mind. That led me to meeting my elephant, Tara, who was employed to beg for her owners before I bought her and set off on the adventure I later described in my book Travels on my Elephant. At the end of it I just couldn’t bear to sell her, so now she lives the life of Riley with some friends of mine at Kipling Camp in central India. A couple of years ago we celebrated her 50th birthday with a cake so heavy that it took eight people to carry.

Tara was the inspiration for the charity, so whenever I lose motivation I try to fly back to see her. I love visiting, but India itself I can’t recognise any more. The money there is unbelievable, and not in a good way. People spend $30m on weddings and you see sons of tycoons bribing the police to keep the roads clear so they can race their Ferraris. The corruption is unbelievable.

I find that lots of places are ruined now and the border regulations mean it’s much harder to travel as I did when I was younger. Disaster did used to follow me around, though. I once took Ayesha on a holiday to Sri Lanka which she was slightly nervous about, and after reassuring her and getting her there, we found ourselves caught up in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

I’m quite a lot calmer these days, and I really love the English countryside. I was brought up in Sussex, just beneath the South Downs, and when my mother died and my father decided to sell the house, I felt as though I lost a certain amount of stability. It was always a place I would retreat to if I’d done something bad and I still lie awake some nights going through every room, every piece of furniture and every smell in my mind. The country retreat I’ll go to most often now is my other sister Annabel’s place in Dorset, which has become the centre of that side of the family.

Sundays don’t mean much to me as they vary so much depending on where I am. If I’m in London they make me depressed, because they remind me of that dreaded feeling of going back to school: I still can’t shake that off.

IN SHORT

Herbal tea or stiff drink?

I only drink blended whiskey in a tall glass with lots of ice and water.

Your earliest memory?

I had an imaginary friend, a small, wizened, elf-like creature with an old top hat and tails. My parents had to lay an extra place at lunch for him and everyone thought I was slightly demented.

If you could be born in another age, when would it be?

The 19th century, the great time of exploration. Richard Burton is one of my heroes.

Oddest thing you’ve even eaten?

I’ve eaten most things, but it would probably be poisonous beetles.

Favourite book?

I have three: Brazilian Adventure by Peter Fleming, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby and Rodney Stone by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

FIVE FAVOURITE THINGS

A gold Ganesh from my ex-wife, which I wear around my neck. If I lost that I would go mad

A box that my daughter painted

My collection of 19th and 20th-century Ganesh wooden masks

A hair from Tara’s tail

My father’s letters to me, which always used to start: “I write this in sorrow rather than anger”

The Animal Ball is on July 9. For auction details and tickets see The Animal Ball